PAGE 3
PAGE 5
PAGE 7
Minneapolis Gets
Good Outcomes
Many States
Partner with
Faith Programs
Maryland
Church Forges
Youth Program
BULLETIN Kinship of Greater
Issue 12
Summer 2003
The Mosaic of Faith-Based Mentoring
Whether the focus is religious or secular, faith communities offer much to mentoring
By Mark Fulop, Director, NMC
W
ith the current interest in faith-based
mentoring, common questions that arise
are, What makes a mentoring program
faith-based? and What, exactly, does the concept
of faith contribute to youth mentoring?
In the process of providing training and technical
assistance to mentoring programs across the country,
we at the National Mentoring Center have encountered a wide range of programs and practices that
fit under the concept of faith-based youth mentoring.
In examining these programs and practices, we
have identified a number of broad themes to help
shape our understanding of faith-based mentoring.
We share these themes here as an introduction to
this special issue on faith-based mentoring. The
NMC hopes that this discussion, and the articles
that follow, will make a meaningful contribution
to the conversation about how mentoring services
can grow in faith settings, and how communityand school-based programs can work in partnership
with faith organizations.
FAITH-BASED MENTORING
IS NOT A SHORTCUT
Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention
Northwest Regional
Educational Laboratory
I was recently sitting in my office talking with the
project director of a faith-based mentoring initiative
aimed at youth in the juvenile justice system. The
conversation quickly turned to the familiar themes
related to managing all kinds of youth mentoring
programs: Mentor recruitment is challenging;
working with youth who have many risk factors and
few protective factors is very complex; evaluation
is extremely difficult; and sustainability planning
is a constant high priority. In short, faith-based
mentoring mirrors the same issues facing mentoring
programs of all kinds. Managing youth mentoring
programs is challenging, period. Faith settings
are no exception. Faith-based mentoring offers no
shortcuts to the hard work of designing mentoring
programs that recruit, screen, match, nurture, and
support mentor-youth relationships that are emotionally close and sustained for a long period of time.
This is the central foundation of all mentoring
programs. We know that it is only in this context
of quality relationships that the magic of mentoring
occurs, whether the setting is a church, school, workplace, or community agency.
See MOSAIC, page 2
From the Ground Up
A church builds a model
mentoring program
A decade ago, a group of religious leaders and
church members in Columbia, Maryland,
looked around their community and saw a
need: Many young African American males
were struggling to find their way in the world.
Deeply concerned, these members of the St.
John Baptist Church committed themselves to
doing something about it. What emerged was a
program that has grown into a model of effective mentoring. We invite you to read about the
journey of this outstanding faith-based mentoring effort, beginning on page 7.
The National Mentoring Center Bulletin
MOSAIC:
continued
from page 1
CHARACTERISTICS OF FAITH-BASED
MENTORING
Mediation for Youth Development.
In some neighborhoods and communities,
the faith institutions are the central organizing
agencies of the community. In these cases, the
church, synagogue, or mosque serves as the
catalyst or mediator for positive youth development. The National Ten Point Leadership
Foundation in Boston is an example of faithbased agencies moving beyond a community
service agenda and advocating for long-term
social change. (For more information on the
foundation, see http://www.ntlf.org/index.html.)
Youth mentoring programs in this context
offer the potential of more than just mentoring,
contributing to the larger social bonding between
the youth and the larger community.
■
A Framework for Values and Life Skills.
Finally, faith-based mentoring offers a framework for teaching and modeling values and
life skills to youth. In this area, the faith-based
mentoring programs often make intentional
choices as to the religiosity of the teaching and
modeling. While some faith-based mentoring
programs incorporate religious tenets and teachings into their mentor-youth relationships, other
mentoring programs are largely nonsectarian,
relying on the larger principles related to values
and life skills.
While the common work of developing and implementing a sound mentoring program transcends all
mentoring program distinctions, this is not to suggest
that faith-based mentoring is an artificial construct.
There is evidence that faith can contribute to the
success of youth mentoring through the presence of
distinguishing characteristics—characteristics that
give faith-based youth mentoring programs their special strengths, such as:
■
“THERE IS
EVIDENCE THAT
FAITH CAN
CONTRIBUTE TO
THE SUCCESS OF
YOUTH
MENTORING
THROUGH THE
PRESENCE OF
DISTINGUISHING
CHARACTERISTICS.”
■
■
2
■
A Volunteer-Rich Environment.
Faith-based mentoring programs are typically
a direct activity of a church, synagogue,
or mosque or are anchored to a related faith
institution, such as a community outreach
or social service center. This direct connection
of the program embeds it in the context of
members who often are predisposed toward
volunteerism by their faith and values. Some
faith-based mentoring programs are simply
a partnership between a faith-based institution
and an established community mentoring
program. The members of the faith community
volunteer to become mentors in the community
program, thus mitigating some of the common
challenges of volunteer recruitment.
A Setting for Mentoring Practice.
Some faith-based institutions become a setting
for the mentoring program. In this model, the
church, synagogue, or mosque becomes a safe
place where the mentors and youth can meet.
These faith-based programs resemble other
site-based mentoring models, such as schoolbased or worksite-based programs.
A Commitment to Community Service
and Civic Engagement. A third characteristic that is often inherent in faith-based mentoring programs is a commitment to community
service and civic engagement. This commitment
to service and social transformation, as well
as to personal spiritual growth is an explicit
component of many faith institutions. Often
the community and social services of these
faith communities is nonsectarian; in many
faith-based mentoring programs, community
service is a significant point of interaction
between the mentor and youth.
RECOGNIZING THE SPECTRUM
OF FAITH-BASED MENTORING
Given the variety of program characteristics that
may be present in a faith setting, it is difficult
to arrive at one simple definition of faith-based
mentoring. Mentoring in faith-based settings ranges
across many programmatic dimensions based on
the intentional choices of the specific faith institution
that sponsors the mentoring program. This spectrum of mentoring programs ranges from secular
to faith-secular, faith-centered, or “faith-saturated.”
(For more information on the topic of faith-based
diversity see Working Group on Human Needs
and Faith-Based and Community Initiatives,
http://working-group.org.) While faith-based mentoring is a mosaic that eludes a simple definition,
the rich fabric found in the diversity of faith-based
mentoring opens to us multiple possibilities for
the much-needed expansion of quality youth
mentoring programs throughout all the communities
of our nation. ◆
Summer 2003
Making a Difference in the Spirit of Kinship
Kinship of Greater Minneapolis Director Daniel Johnson talks about
the success of his organization— and the realities of faith-based mentoring
By Michael Garringer
D
espite its current cachet on the national
scene, faith-based mentoring is far from
a new concept. An organization called
Kinship has been providing youth mentoring
in faith settings for half a century.
Since the 1950s, Kinship has grown and spread.
Many of its affiliates have been developed as secular
mentoring programs, but some have remained faithbased. One of those affiliates, Kinship of Greater
Minneapolis, offers an instructive look at the development and operation of a successful faith-based
mentoring program.
Launched as a separate nonprofit organization in
1988, the Minneapolis Kinship program has created more than 1,000 long-term matches. Although
it is a Christian organization, mentors are not
required to be Christian or to share their faith with
their mentee. While the majority of mentors in the
program are church members, the nature of the mentoring relationships is fairly religion-neutral. At the
end of last fiscal year, Kinship had 269 active mentoring relationships, with 97 of those created within
the last year.
The organization has also seen some outstanding
outcomes for youth in recent years. Unlike many
programs, the Minneapolis Kinship embraces program evaluation, viewing it as the best way of determining if their mentoring relationships are making
a difference for the youth. Evaluation is seen as the
engine that drives improvements in the program’s
operations and procedures.
Kinship uses a combination of internally developed
evaluation instruments and evaluation components
taken from the Search Institute publication What’s
Working: Tools for Evaluating Your Mentoring Program. At the beginning of a mentoring relationship,
and at the yearly anniversary thereafter, an evaluation form is sent to every child, parent, and mentor
in the program. The results of these surveys are
grouped into four areas: the youth’s sense of responsibility, respectfulness toward others, social skills,
and sense of optimism.
The results have been quite positive across the
board. Data from the last year indicate that close
to half the parents and a majority of youth participating in the program perceived positive impacts
in each of the four focus areas (see chart below).
The mentors themselves reported seeing less
improvement in each of the four areas.
Increased responsibility
Increased respect
Improved social skills
Increased optimism
Children Parents Mentors
61%
45%
26%
61%
45%
23%
70%
65%
23%
74%
72%
61%
Parents were also asked a series of questions to rate
the overall effectiveness of the Kinship program.
Among their responses: 96 percent felt that they
and their family had benefited from having their
child participate in the program, while 83 percent
felt that Kinship staff had properly supported both
their family and the match.
“WE SERVE KIDS
FROM A WHOLE
RANGE OF RACIAL
AND RELIGIOUS
BACKGROUNDS
AND DO NOT USE
FUNDING FOR
A RELIGIOUS
INDOCTRINATION.”
Mentors were also asked to rate their experience in
the program. An overwhelming majority of mentors
felt that Kinship had provided them with enough
training and support. More than 70 percent of mentors claimed that the experience had a positive effect
on their life, while over 80 percent said they would
recommend volunteering in the program to a friend.
That last number is a crucial one for a program like
Kinship, which relies on word of mouth and informal recruitment from current volunteers for much
of its influx of mentors.
Kinship’s evaluation data show that the program
is meeting the expectations of its three client groups.
Participants feel that the program is properly
preparing and supporting them. Both parents and
mentors indicate that they are happy, not only with
the outcomes for the youth, but with their interaction
with the program’s staff and the overall experience
of being in the program. Perhaps most important,
the evaluation shows that even the mentees themselves are sensing the value of having a mentor in
their life.
See KINSHIP, page 4
3
The National Mentoring Center Bulletin
KINSHIP: The Inside Story
continued Below, Daniel Johnson, Executive Director of
from page 3 Kinship of Greater Minneapolis, shares with NMC
Bulletin readers some insights based on his vast
experience in the world of faith-based mentoring.
(For additional information visit the Kinship Web
site at www.kinship.org.)
NMC: I think folks would be interested
in learning a bit about the history and
structure of the Kinship program.
Daniel Johnson: Kinship’s ministry began in
1954 when students in a Home Missions course
at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, were
assigned to explore the needs within their community. They discovered there were young men who
were in trouble with the law and who were also of
single-parent homes. They decided to befriend these
young men, and gradually developed what was
called the Kinsmen program. Over time, girls were
also included. Soon the program also began to
utilize couples and families as Kinship friends/
mentors. The program also branched off to work
interdenominationally, working with boys and girls
as young as five years of age.
The concept of Kinship stems from the Old Testament, where large, extended families or tribes were
expected to look out for one another. This sometimes
involved redeeming or buying people out of slavery.
This concept of Kinship was expanded within the
Christian church, as Christ expanded the concept
of family to include all people, whatever their status
or faith background. Followers of Christ were mandated to care about all others in need, particularly
fatherless and motherless children.
The Kinship model was adopted by the American
Lutheran Church (ALC) in 1967. This helped to
develop Kinship affiliates across the country, primarily in the Upper Midwest. Not long after the merger
of the Lutheran churches in 1989, support for the
national Kinship organization was discontinued.
Since this time, the national program has been
supported as a separate, nonprofit organization by
a volunteer board of directors. Small annual dues
are provided by the 60 national affiliates to support
a part-time administrator. Thanks to the small
national start-up costs and minimal national dues,
many of our affiliates are able to operate successfully
in small towns.
Two strong state alliances in Minnesota and Wisconsin have focused on the development and implementation of program standards and communications. We were able to implement a peer review
process, thanks in large part to funding from the
McKnight Foundation. The McKnight Foundation
also provided funding to strengthen the use of technology among our Kinship programs. More recently,
the Otto Bremer Foundation has helped us to
enhance our organizational effectiveness through
their financial support. Specifically, this funding has
allowed us to provide a wide range of trainings for
our affiliates on important issues such as board
development, fund raising, and risk management.
NMC: What types of mentoring
relationships does Kinship facilitate?
Are things like Bible study and other
“faith-intensive” activities typical of
most relationships, or are the mentoring
relationships and activities similar
to what one would see in a typical
community- or school-based model?
DJ: Our program is more closely aligned with
a typical community-based model. However, we
recognize the tremendous motivation that faith has
to inspire people to give of themselves personally
and financially. It is up to the mentor, the child, and
his or her parent or guardian on the role faith plays
out in the relationship. We try to be very sensitive
to all participants in our program on how they
express themselves. I remember one parent who
specifically wanted to have a Christian volunteer
for her children, commenting on how the mentor’s
faith would impact little things like the kind of music
they listened to while in the car. We believe that the
actions of Kinship mentors will speak louder than
their words. Using theological terms, this is called
“incarnational ministry.”
NMC: Do you run into prospective
mentors who shy away from the faithbased approach?
DJ: I believe we’ve attracted far more people
as a result of our mission than those who have been
deterred by it. We’ve had volunteers of a variety
of faith backgrounds who are comfortable with our
mission, organizational values, and structure. I think
that trying to be all things to all people actually can
be more of a disadvantage than an advantage.
See KINSHIP, page 13
4
Summer 2003
State Partnerships Reach Out to Faith Programs
Across the nation, faith-based efforts are finding an array of support services
A
s the development of local faith-based
mentoring programs has grown in popularity,
so have the training, technical assistance,
and other support services offered to these programs
by state mentoring partnerships and other largescale mentoring initiatives. These state partnerships
are increasingly customizing their support services
to meet the unique challenges of faith-based
programs, and many are actively promoting
the expansion of mentoring in faith settings.
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the most
prominent efforts to support faith-based mentoring
through State and Regional Partnerships:
Alabama. At the urging of state Attorney General
Bill Pryor, Mentor Alabama has been actively
promoting faith-based mentoring throughout the
state. In January 2001, the state convened more
than 300 leaders from the state’s faith community
for a Faith Summit on Mentoring, which focused
on mobilizing congregations to volunteer and
encouraging faith communities to partner with
existing programs or create new ones. The Mentor
Alabama Web site contains several suggestions
on how churches and other faith organizations
can get involved in mentoring and provides a
useful set of guidelines for faith volunteers and
programs that will be working in public schools.
You can learn more about Alabama’s efforts at
http://www.ago.state.al.us/mentor/faith.htm.
Delaware. The Delaware Mentoring Council
(DMC) currently works with some half-dozen
faith-based mentoring efforts. A Faith Committee
has been established to promote and recruit mentors
in the faith community. An Interfaith Mentoring
Coalition Task Force—which consists of various
members from the mentoring, faith-based mentoring,
faith, and mentoring communities—recently
launched a faith-based recruitment campaign
in conjunction with National Volunteer Week.
Through the council’s partnership with the Corporation for National and Community Service, an
AmeriCorps VISTA member works with the faith
community to promote mentoring. The council
also provides a number of manuals on how to create
a faith-based mentoring program, as well as general
packets on the 10 best practices for mentoring
programs—practices that are applicable to any
mentoring program.
Florida. Governor Jeb Bush’s Mentoring Initiative
recently made a strong commitment to faith-based
involvement in Florida by allocating money to help
boost the numbers of volunteer mentors from faith
settings. Frontline Outreach, an Orlando-based
nonprofit Christian ministry, has been awarded
a grant to help churches recruit congregation members to serve as volunteers in existing mentoring
programs. Although the project is still in its initial
stages, Frontline Outreach hopes to eventually get
500 mentors from five pilot cities across the state.
To help achieve this goal, it has created an advisory
committee composed of leaders from churches,
mosques, synagogues, and other houses of worship,
who will serve as advocates for the program in their
congregations and religious communities. The hope
is that these representative leaders will be able to
inspire increased volunteerism and participation in
existing school- and community-based programs.
Through a partnership with America’s Promise,
each church that fulfills its mentoring commitments
will be formally designated a Congregation of
Promise. Frontline Outreach also provides preservice training for interested volunteers and congregations on the basics of volunteering in schools and
other secular settings.
Maine. In an effort to encourage volunteers
from faith organizations to participate in mentoring
relationships, the state has developed Maine
Interfaith Mentoring, a collaborative effort among
the Maine Mentoring Partnership, the Maine
Council of Churches, and Communities for
Children. Starting with Governor Angus King’s
endorsement in 2000, the group has been dedicated
to strengthening faith-based efforts in the state
through coordinated volunteer recruitment,
development of replicable program models, and
the provision of preservice training of volunteers
from congregations across a wide spectrum of faiths.
The “Heart to Hand Project” encourages communities of faith to partner with schools and existing
community organizations, guided by a Heart to
Hand manual describing all the basics for launching
such a partnership. Maine Interfaith Mentoring
hopes to increase the number of the state’s children
who are in mentoring relationships by increasing
public awareness about mentoring through a statewide media campaign and by fostering collaboration
among schools and religious leaders.
See STATES, page 6
5
The National Mentoring Center Bulletin
STATES: Maryland. The Maryland Mentoring Partnership
continued provides consultation, volunteer management,
from page 5 training workshops, and networking opportunities
to churches participating in the Church Mentoring
Initiative. The initiative includes a wide range of
church-based programs serving youth throughout
Baltimore and the surrounding communities.
The Maryland Mentoring Partnership also has
partnered with another faith-based program called
Baltimore Rising. This partnership aims to reduce
juvenile violence in the city through the work of
volunteer mentors and their churches.
Massachusetts. The Mass Mentoring Partnership currently supports 20 faith programs through
its Faith-based Mentoring Network. The Network
provides training, technical assistance, and other
supports for churches, synagogues, mosques,
and other religious institutions as they develop
and enhance their mentoring efforts. One particular
focus of the partnership is increased participation
from non-Christian faith communities. Many
faith-based programs in the state are stepping
in and delivering services where state and county
funding has been reduced or eliminated. To ensure
that these programs are designed around effective
best practices, the partnership offers discounts
and waivers for many of its services to faith-based
programs.
New York. Faith-based organizations that are
thinking about starting up a program can turn to
the Mentoring Partnership of New York for several
kinds of assistance. The partnership offers guidance
6
in choosing program designs that meet the needs
of particular congregations. They also provide
a series of trainings for faith-based coordinators
to help ensure that faith-based programs in the city
are running safe and effective programs. The partnership also hosts “mentoring fellowship dinners,”
which regularly bring lay and religious leaders of
many faiths together to network, share ideas, and
discuss the challenges associated with creating and
operating a faith-based mentoring program.
Philadelphia. The Church Mentoring Network,
a service of the Greater Philadelphia Mentoring
Partnership, is one of the nation’s oldest and most
successful faith-based efforts, and has served as
the model for many other faith-based program
networks across the country. The network assists
faith-based programs by providing program development advice and ongoing training for volunteers
and staff, as well as coordinating and sharing
resources across programs. This coordination
and assistance allow churches to design programs
that meet their particular needs without having
to “reinvent the wheel.” The Church Mentoring
Network has allowed faith-based mentoring programs in the city to be truly greater than the sum
of their parts. The network has added two valuable
how-to guidebooks to the mentoring literature base:
Church Mentoring Network: A Program Manual
for Linking and Supporting Mentoring Ministries
and Church-based Mentoring: A Program Manual
for Mentoring Ministries. (These excellent guidebooks are profiled in the resources section that
begins on page 18 of this issue.) ◆
Summer 2003
The Work
of a Saint
St. John Baptist Church Mentoring
Program tells a familiar story
By Michael Garringer
COLUMBIA, Maryland—In May 1992,
several religious leaders and congregation members
from St. John Baptist Church held a meeting.
The topic for the evening was the community itself
or, more accurately, the challenging conditions faced
by many of its residents, particularly its young
African American males. The Board of Christian
Education had organized the meeting to discuss
how the church might address some of the problems
of the community through congregational outreach
and volunteer service.
A decision was made that evening: Ten active
church members who had a high interest in helping
youth formed the St. John Baptist Church Core
Mentoring Group. Just like that, a program was born.
It is the type of decision made in churches across
America hundreds of times every year. A group
of citizens had been motivated by their faith and by
the conditions around them to help strengthen their
community and the lives of its children. But once
that initial decision had been made, a lot of hard
work lay ahead.
Behind the simplicity of the idea was the infinitely
complicated question, “How do we do this?” The
decisions the St. John program staff have made in
design, implementation, and direction over the last
decade are both unique to their program and typical
of what many programs go through, faith-based or
not. The process they went through in setting up the
program can be informative for other faith organizations—for those who may be sitting in the meeting
rooms of churches, temples, mosques, or synagogues
discussing similar investments in their community’s
youth.
The journey of the St. John program will be familiar
to many in the mentoring field, as they have both
struggled through rough patches and enjoyed
tremendous successes. The story of this faith-based
program ultimately offers many lessons that can be
valuable to faith and non-faith programs alike.
DESIGNING THE PROGRAM
The task of the Core Mentoring Group was to create the scope, structure, and operational procedures
for the program. Following the steps below resulted
in a program that was thoughtfully designed, appropriate for both the community and the church, and
able to provide quality mentoring services.
1. Community needs assessment. The needs
of the community and its youth were readily apparent
to the church. The effects of poor socioeconomic
conditions on several parts of the community were
the reason that the church had called that initial meeting. But in order to make the program truly effective,
specific community needs had to be identified.
Some of the problems were obvious. Data indicated
that Columbia had a growing number of head-ofhouseholds existing at or below the poverty level.
And as with many communities across America,
changes in family structure over the past 30 years
had left many youth lacking sufficient contact with
positive adult role models.
Also, analysis of data from the Howard County
Public Schools indicated that African American
students, especially boys, were not performing as
well as other students. Standardized test scores,
academic performance, and dropout rates for this
group were all areas that needed addressing.
A school district study that indicated middle school
students could benefit from more individualized
and adult support helped cement African American
youths ages 10-17 as the target population for the
program.
See SAINT, page 8
7
The National Mentoring Center Bulletin
SAINT: 2. Securing the endorsement of the church.
continued Although the Core Mentoring Group was working
from page 7 on behalf of the church, they were still essentially
an exploratory committee. They still had to convince
the church leadership, and to some extent the congregation itself, that youth mentoring was an appropriate response to both the low academic performance and the absence of adult role models in the
lives of the target population. They also had to convince the leadership that the program would be
worth the time and resources.
While the needs assessment clearly pointed to
a role for the church in
the lives of these kids,
it was the advocacy and
endorsement of mentoring by the Core Group
that really brought the
program into being.
Without the financial
and spiritual support of
the church leadership,
the program would not
have gone anywhere.
For faith-based programs such as this, it is vital that
this core group of individuals act as “champions” for
the program when it is in its start-up phase. The fact
that the St. John Core Group was comprised of men
and women from a wide variety of backgrounds and
professions meant that they were able to garner
broad-based support for the program and across the
community. Simply put, their group was representative of the community, could understand and articulate the community’s and youth’s needs, and were
able to get both the church leadership and congregation to agree that the program should move forward.
Once the church leadership had endorsed the program, one of the Core Group members was elevated
to Program Coordinator, while the others assumed
responsibility over various aspects of the program.
Some support and clerical time was donated by
church staff, a modest amount of money was allocated for program activities and volunteer recognition,
and attention was turned toward the design of the
program’s services.
3. Operations planning. In designing the actual
structure and services of the program, St. John had
to answer some fairly typical questions: What type of
mentoring model is right for our church? What types
of activities will mentors, youth, and families be
involved in? And once individuals have become program participants, what services do we offer them?
8
The St. John program chose to implement a rather
traditional one-on-one mentoring model. Although
the program would eventually take on a formal partnership with local schools, it was decided that most
meetings would be conducted outside school, the
church, or other “site-based” locales. This made
scheduling of one-on-one mentoring activities easier
and allowed for a wider range of activities for youths
and mentors.
In addition to these one-on-one meetings, there
would be occasional group activities in an effort to
broaden the interaction of program participants and
to foster a sense of “community.” It was also decided
that the program would offer other services to youth
and their families, mostly around academic enrichment and parental involvement, that would not
involve the mentors.
The actual components for the St. John program
have expanded somewhat over time, but many of
the core services have been in place throughout the
project. With its wide variety of services, this holistic
program is able to address a full range of participant
needs in the areas of school, career, and family:
Academic enrichment: After-school tutoring
sessions are provided for youth in the program.
Tutors are a mix of church volunteers, school
system employees, and teenage peers who actually conduct most of the tutoring activities under
the supervision of the adults.
Values education: Bimonthly mentee workshops are presented on a wide range of topics
such as personal responsibility, the value of cooperation, the meaning of faith, self-determination,
and self-esteem.
Career awareness: Mentees are provided
workshops on career-focused topics such as how
to fill out an application, tips on preparing for
interviews, and acceptable work behavior. Mentors and others involved in the program also
introduce mentees to employment opportunities
and assist in exploring career options.
Parental involvement: This is one big area
where the St. John program has excelled where
other programs struggle. The program recognized that the work they would do in providing
the support of an adult role model would be
somewhat negated unless they provided some
assistance to the most prominent adults in the
youth’s lives: their parents and guardians. To
that end, the program provides monthly sessions
and support groups for the parents of participating youth. The group sessions are conducted by
a social worker and allow the parents to learn
Summer 2003
about their child’s progress in the program,
interact with other families, and tap into support
systems outside the St. John program.
Cultural awareness: The program sponsors
regular activities designed around increasing the
cultural awareness and understanding of participating youth.
Social and recreational activities: These
are group activities such as camping, concerts,
and picnics that promote social interaction.
Community service: Each academic year,
mentees in the program, with the help of their
mentors, choose a community service project.
This helps build teamwork skills and feelings
of social responsibility.
Recognition events: These services to program participants include an annual Opening
Ceremony and an end-of-year celebration for all
participants. The program also recognizes three
exemplary individuals as Mentee, Mentor, and
Parent/Guardian of the Year.
The church also made a formal decision to not
require youth to attend church services, although
mentors are encouraged to bring their mentees with
them. The level of “faith involvement” is an issue
with which many faith-based programs struggle.
St. John concluded that they could meet the goals
of the program without making religious study part
of the program services.
“The mentoring relationships are ‘faith-focused’
only to the extent that the mentors come from a
faith community and regard their involvement as
an expression of their faith,” says current Program
Director Doug Pace. “The program promotes character building but does not promote any denomination, including our own. Mentees are taught selfrespect, respect for family and all people, integrity,
positive attitudes and behaviors, and are given
opportunities to serve others.”
4. Recruitment and training of mentors and
mentees. The St. John Core Mentoring Group
devised a set of clear guidelines, roles, and responsibilities for use in volunteer recruitment and screening. They also set a criterion that would come to
define their targeted volunteer recruitment efforts:
All mentors must be African American males. The
church decided that this target population of mentors was necessary if they were going to effectively
reach out to African American boys.
While the initial matches for the project all involved
men who were congregation members at St. John
Baptist Church, the program decided in later years
to allow nonmembers to participate. All mentors are
required to commit at least one hour per week with
the youth for a minimum of one academic year.
They must also complete a criminal background
check and provide references.
To assist mentors in their role, the St. John program
offers extensive pre-match training on youth development, communication skills, and techniques for
facilitating effective mentoring relationships. They
have developed a Man-to-Man Mentoring Program
Handbook, which covers roles, responsibilities, and
recommended mentoring strategies for both academic improvement and any religious study that the
match chooses to undertake.
Youth participants were initially drawn from the
church’s Adopt-a-Family Program, but now they are
recruited to the program from both the congregation
as a whole and through a partnership with a local
middle and high school. All youth participants
are provided with information about the purpose,
services, and rules of the program, as well as orientation as to the value of having a mentor and what
the presence of a role model in their lives can mean
for them. Youth are told how the program can help
them achieve the goals they set for themselves with
the assistance of their mentor. Because the program
concluded that parental involvement was a key to
the youths’ success in the program, it became a
requirement for youth participation.
5. Forming partnerships and awareness in
the community. The St. John program recognized early on that success would depend on the
buy-in of the community as a whole. The time and
energy of volunteers and the financial and in-kind
donations provided by the church were not enough
for the long haul; a wider base of support was necessary to ensure the sustainability of the program and
achievement of its desired outcomes.
To this end, the Core Group developed presentations
to be given to both private and public community
groups about the needs of youth in the community
and what the St. John Baptist Mentoring Program
wanted to do to help. These presentations offered
excellent networking opportunities and another
chance for the members of the Core Mentoring
Group to “champion” the program and garner both
financial and philosophical support.
In addition to this broad-based community awareness campaign, the group also established several
See SAINT, page 10
9
The National Mentoring Center Bulletin
SAINT: strategic partnerships. The most significant partnercontinued ship, formed after the program had been operating
from page 9 for a few years, came with the Howard County
Public Schools, specifically Wilde Lake Middle and
High Schools. Having a teacher from the school
system as a member of the Core Group was extremely valuable in setting up the partnership. Not only
did working with the schools help the program provide better academic support for the youth, but it
also meant increased capacity to serve more youth
through the coordination of physical and financial
resources. The program’s decision against faithcentered relationships was a key in making the
school partnerships work.
The program also forged partnerships with the Maryland Mentoring Partnership’s Church Mentoring
Initiative, the University of Baltimore School of Public Health, and the Howard University School of
Divinity, as well as several local businesses and foundations. These partnerships have proven to be a vital
part of keeping the program going over the years.
THE ST. JOHN PROGRAM OVER TIME
The process and decisions described to this point
provided the framework for the program to begin
operations and start making matches. So how did
the program do over the years? How successful was
the St. John program in assisting the community’s
youth?
Like many youth service, nonprofit, and community
outreach projects, the outcomes and results of the
St. John program have been somewhat mixed. Positive outcomes can be hard to measure, and even the
best designed, successful programs will occasionally
struggle with issues of sustainability, leadership, and
project momentum.
The program started slowly in 1992, making
a dozen or so matches during the first few years
of operation. Over the next few years, a full-time
program coordinator was brought on board and
the program’s services started to expand. The
parental involvement and tutoring pieces were
enhanced, and the program started to evaluate
its efforts. The program took in some significant
financial donations and gained momentum.
In 1996 the program officially became part of the
St. John Baptist Church’s Evangelism and Outreach Ministry, which meant that mentors could be
recruited from beyond the church walls. “We wanted to embrace even more youth… we needed to look
10
beyond our congregation to significantly add to the
number of mentees,” says Pace.
Some of the early youth participants in the program
started graduating from high school and successfully
aging out of the program. Although the numbers
were modest, the good work that the program was
doing was finally starting to show substantial results.
It was in the fifth year of operation that things really
took off. The program received a three-year grant as
part of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s Juvenile Mentoring Program
(JUMP). The $190,000 award primarily facilitated the official partnership with the Howard County
Public Schools and the middle and high schools.
The program was also able to hire more staff and
move the operations out of the church and into a
business office, allowing better access to the program
for youth and increased participation in the program’s after-school activities.
Not surprisingly, with the influx of money came an
increase in the scope of the program and the number
of youth served. By 1998 the program was facilitating 41 one-on-one matches and had more than 100
volunteers. Five mentees achieved honor roll status
that year, and the peer tutoring component was
added.
The year 2000 represented a high-water mark for
the JUMP grant as the number of active matches
reached 55. The faith-based program that started
with a meeting of concerned congregation members
a decade ago had grown to scale. With the hard
work of its volunteers and the right combination of
community, religious, and governmental support it
had evolved from a concept grounded in the faithdriven desire to do good in the world to a viable
volunteer program that serves many children and
helps connect schools, parents, youth, and the
community as a whole.
Even more important, given the high importance
of duration on the effectiveness of a mentoring
relationship, the average length of retention for
the program’s mentors was 4.5 years. The program
was making the types of long-term matches that it
had hoped for from the beginning.
Things changed, however, in the 2000–2001
academic year. That’s when the JUMP grant’s
three-year funding cycle ended. Without JUMP,
which is designed to seed new mentoring efforts,
the program scaled back its services. The program
Summer 2003
is currently supporting 12 mentees with 25 regular
volunteers and a part-time administrative assistant.
■
“The program is functioning well, albeit with fewer
youth (mentees) and group activities,” says Pace.
“We have completed the transition from a larger
program supported by a sizeable federal grant and
in-kind services to a small program supported primarily by in-kind services and a $10,000 grant from the
Howard County Department of Citizen Services.”
Program Director Pace remains positive, despite
the uncertainty in funding. “The program’s biggest
success has been the ability to offer youth the same
basic program through lucrative and lean funding
periods,” he says.
THE LESSONS LEARNED
In 2000, the St. John Baptist Mentoring Program’s
first graduate was accepted to college. The same
year, another mentee was inducted into the National
Honor Society. What can both faith-based and
other mentoring programs learn from the experience
of the St. John program?
The Replication Report prepared by Information
Technology International under the grant from
Howard County found that there were six key elements of the St. John program that would be important in the development of other similar programs:
■
The importance of the committed,
diverse “Core Group” of program leaders
and advocates. This diverse Core Mentoring
Group was obviously instrumental in the startup and development phases of the program.
They were the ones responsible for planning the
program and garnering the support for the
church leadership. Their diversity also allowed
the program to access a wide range of community support and opened doors to program partnerships that would have remained closed if not
for the work of these individuals.
The Core Group still plays a major role in the
St. John program. These volunteers provide the
program with leadership, expertise, and assistance in 10 major program areas: academics,
counseling, cultural/social awareness, program
evaluation, mentor liaison, parental involvement,
recreation, school liaison, substance abuse, and
values education. The involvement of this group
allows the program to provide improved support
to the youth, parents, and mentors across a
broad range of needs.
■
The infrastructure of the church itself.
The consistent administrative support provided
by the St. John Baptist Church proved to be
very valuable for the program. Church volunteers made significant contributions on laborintensive tasks such as the monitoring of matches
and the coordination of group activities. This
administrative support meant that the program
could blend volunteers with its few paid staff,
increasing its capacity to serve more youth and
offer a wider variety of program services. The
administrative support of the church is what
allowed the program to grow to an appropriate
scale, even during the financial windfall provided by the JUMP grant.
Community
outreach and
networking.
In the case of the
St. John program
model, it made
sense to reach
out to the larger
community in the
creation and on
going support for
the program. Some
faith-based programs may choose
to remain more
insular, as would be
appropriate for, say, a mentoring ministry with
a heavy emphasis on religious study through the
church. But the scope and goals of the St. John
Baptist Mentoring Program made community
involvement not only viable, but necessary.
Community involvement enabled the program
to maintain a higher level of mentor involvement
and participation, aided in leveraging resources,
and opened up avenues (such as the formal
partnership with the school) that made accessing
and serving youth easier. Pace says that the program uses many methods to build this community support. “Special programs, invited involvement, and public awards have been the primary
vehicles for the enthusiasm and support we have
enjoyed from the congregation and community
over the years,” he says. “Twice a year, programs are held that focus on recognition of the
mentees, mentors, and parents or guardians,
and these programs are open to the congregation
and the community at large. Each year, one of
the regular church worship services is earmarked
for recognition of the mentees and mentors.
See SAINT, page 12
11
The National Mentoring Center Bulletin
SAINT:
continued
from page 11
■
Members of the congregation and community
are asked to serve as guest speakers, workshop
leaders, tutors, and performing artists for program events. Recognition awards at the national,
state, and county levels have also helped to
maintain support for the program.”
Strong commitment and support from
the board of trustees, church pastor,
program director, and other church leadership. The St. John program has survived two
■
FACING AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE?
As I was putting together this profile of the St. John program, the issue
of “growing a program to scale” kept popping up in my mind. Essentially,
now that its JUMP funding has proven that the St. John program can
function at a high level and serve a significant number of students, the real
question becomes, Will it have the chance to do so in the future?
That same question is facing hundreds, if not thousands, of mentoring efforts
currently operating around the country. We know that mentoring works—
and how it works—more clearly than ever before. And nobody can deny that
the mentoring field has seen tremendous growth during the last decade. But
looking long-term, is there enough financial support from both government
and private sources to maintain not only this one program, but the mentoring
movement as a whole? Is it possible that the entire mentoring movement will
have trouble “growing to scale”? Or if it is already at an appropriate scale,
can it be sustained?
The St. John Baptist Church Mentoring Program, in spite of all its hard
work, thoughtful planning, and success, is in the same boat as nonprofits
and youth service agencies around the country: facing a somewhat uncertain
future. Can the program find enough support to fully complement the
tremendous amounts of time and energy that their volunteers bring to the
table? Will it be able to serve the numbers of children it could serve with a
larger funding base? The seed money funding opportunities such as JUMP
grants depend for their success on the abundance of other resources and
a broad base of public, private, and government support. If other funding
opportunities fail to materialize, countless promising programs that have
taken root are destined to shrink substantially—or shut down altogether.
Those of us who advocate for youth mentoring hope that not only will St.
John find a way to build back up to an optimum level of youth served, but
that mentoring programs across the country will find the support they need
to build their programs to scale in the coming years. If we are ever to make
youth mentoring what it can be for this country, it is imperative that we grow
it to scale one local program at a time.
—Michael Garringer
12
■
changes in leadership—changes that often cripple mentoring efforts—one at the project director
level and one being the church pastor. The program survived because there was strong buy-in
across the board by the church leadership. The
Core Mentoring Group and the incoming pastor, Dr. Robert A.F. Turner, made certain that
there was strong support for the program from
the board of trustees on down to the congregation. This ensured that the program would survive changes in both program leadership and the
level of outside financial support.
The importance of building trust with
mentees and parents. This is true for any
type of mentoring program. The St. John program placed a priority on pre-match training for
mentors so that when they walked into their mentoring relationships, and the lives of the participating families, they were prepared to start the
relationship off in a positive way. Listening and
communication skills were particularly important
in building trust with the youth. The program
also built trust with parents by offering services
specifically designed to increase their participation in the program and their access to other
forms of support. Thus, parents came to view the
program as a valuable resource that was reaching
out to the entire family. The parent support
groups were particularly crucial in this regard.
Group activities that supplement the oneon-one matches. While most of the mentoring
was through one-on-one relationships, the many
group activities sponsored by the program contributed heavily to the positive outcomes for youth
and the success of the program. These group
activities enhanced mentees’ social relationship
skills in ways that time spent with just their mentors could not. These group events also fostered
a sense of community across all program participants, leading to greater volunteer satisfaction
and increased sense of support by the mentees.
In many ways, the St. John Baptist Mentoring
Program story is a common one: A group of dedicated individuals came together and reached out
to the community by starting a mentoring program.
They’ve gone through many of the ups and downs
that youth mentoring programs of all types experience. The story of this one faith-based program can
help guide other groups of concerned individuals
meeting in churches around the country, wondering
how they, too, can help their community. ◆
Summer 2003
I remember one day when someone called and was
put off by the fact that we were faith-based. She
simply didn’t understand our rationale. Later that
day we received a call with a list of a dozen prospective mentors who had attended the Billy Graham crusade, which was in town. I did the math—
lose one, gain 12. I think we came out ahead.
NMC: How strongly does your
organization’s mission and vision
influence the work you do?
DJ: Our mission statement has been essential to
our program growth. Having a clearly defined
mission and values has helped us to hire some highly
motivated staff and recruit a strong board of directors. Additionally, many donors and volunteers
have also become engaged in the work of Kinship
because they were attracted to its faith-based structure. It helps us to limit our scope when we are
researching funding sources and also keeps us
focused on our work.
Our mission statement follows: “Kinship of Greater
Minneapolis helps children, ages five through 15,
in need of additional support realize their God-given
potential through adult friendships. Kinship also
provides a unique service opportunity for individuals, couples, and families to put their faith into
action on behalf of children. The core values and
beliefs that guide our program are that:
◆ Children deserve the opportunity for healthy
social, physical, spiritual, and intellectual
development
◆ Regular, long-term relationships with a variety
of adults are vital to healthy child development
◆ Prevention is more valuable and effective in
human development than interventions occurring
after considerable suffering and hurt have scarred
lives
◆ We are motivated by the command of Jesus Christ
to love our neighbor as ourselves; the Christian
church is mandated to respond to the needs of
hurting children and their families
◆ People need opportunities to put their faith
into action; Kinship provides the structure
and organization for them to do this effectively
◆ We believe in inclusiveness and collaborative
efforts that bring people together of different
races and creeds
◆ Christian witness speaks most loudly when it is a
comforting response to the needs of others, when
◆
◆
it is not judgmental or proud, and when unconditional love is present
The quality of Kinship service and relationships is more important than quantity; we
believe in careful screening, matching, and
follow-up support of program participants
Kinship’s professional staff is qualified,
motivated, and committed to this mission
KINSHIP:
continued
from page 4
NMC: What have been the biggest
challenges for Kinship over the years?
Are those challenges specific to a faithbased organization or are they common
across many types of nonprofits and
youth service agencies?
DJ: Our two biggest challenges have been recruiting long-term mentors and developing a strong base
of financial support. In addition to recruiting
through churches, we also utilize newspapers, radio,
service groups, and corporations to locate people
interested in befriending children. Word of mouth is
our largest source of volunteers. [See Dan Johnson’s
church volunteer recruitment tips on page 14.]
To start up our program, our financial support
consisted primarily of grants from corporations and
foundations. I’m pleased to report that being faithbased has not been a significant barrier for funding.
We serve kids from a whole range of racial and
religious backgrounds and do not use funding for
a religious indoctrination. We are not a United Way
agency, nor do we receive significant government
funding. We have diligently been working to develop
a strong base of individual support. In addition
to annual appeals, we have two special-event
fundraisers per year—a golf event and a dinner
auction. Our goal is to have half of our annual
revenues come through individual funding.
Initially, somewhat to our surprise, we discovered
that churches were much more willing to help on
recruitment of mentors than they were able to give
financial support at a significant level.
NMC: Many programs shy away from
doing program evaluations. Why did
you decide to do one?
DJ: We were encouraged by some of our larger
corporate funders, like the Pillsbury Foundation
and the Cargill Foundation, to develop outcome
See KINSHIP, page 14
13
The National Mentoring Center Bulletin
KINSHIP: measurements. It has been a useful exercise for us.
continued With increasing scrutiny and scarce resources, we
from page 13 have been pleased to offer strong indicators of suc-
cess. For example, our average match length is two
and a half years. Dr. Jean Rhodes, a professor at the
University of Massachusetts (and the author of
Stand By Me: The Risks and Rewards of Mentoring
Today’s Youth), has done a considerable amount of
research on mentoring, and has noted that the duration of the mentoring relationship is the single most
important benchmark of a successful outcome.
10 PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE
CHURCH RECRUITMENT
Both faith-based and secular programs are increasingly looking to faith institutions as “volunteer-rich” environments with large numbers of potential
mentors. Here, Dan Johnson of Kinship of Greater Minneapolis shares his
top 10 tips for recruiting volunteers from congregations.
1. Realize how your volunteer
opportunity fits within the mission
of the congregation. Why should it
be interested in supporting the work
of your agency?
2. Obtain the blessings of the head
pastor/priest/rabbi. Without his or
her support, efforts to continue supporting your volunteer recruitment
may later be cut off. He or she may
also choose to boost your effort from
the pulpit.
3. Begin to target prospective
churches: those that are active and
have a heart for people that are in
your service area where you currently have volunteers.
4. Target prospective volunteers.
You may be able to get names of
prospective candidates from the
pastor, social ministries committee,
or others within the church.
5. Present specific needs to the
church. For example, provide
profiles of kids on your waiting list,
with names, ages, interests, locations, and the types of volunteers
sought.
14
6. Develop a plan of action for the
congregation. Provide specific, yearround opportunities for volunteer
recruitment, such as “Kinship Sunday,” an adult forum, temple talk,
posters, and so on.
7. Develop church representatives.
Write a job description for these
positions and then have them help
you with ongoing recruitment.
8. See if you can be listed on the
church’s time and talent survey
along with the church’s other ministry opportunities.
9. Keep at it. Patience and steadfastness are crucial. Every congregation has numerous needs for “inhouse” volunteers, such as Sunday
School teachers and ushers, to
maintain its own operations. Don’t
expect great numbers of volunteers,
particularly right away.
10. If your state sponsors a mentoring or volunteerism week, make the
most of it to highlight your volunteer
opportunity. Schedule forums, set
up displays, utilize bulletin inserts,
and solicit announcements from the
pastor/priest/rabbi.
NMC: As someone who has been very
successful at making a faith-based
mentoring program work, what advice
would you give congregations or
ministries thinking about starting up
a program?
DJ: First, you need to weigh the costs of developing
and maintaining a mentoring program. The
demands of operating and supporting a traditional
mentoring program are much like supporting an
adoption agency—without receiving the fees for
service. It will likely require a full-time staff to do
the recruitment, orientation, screening, matching,
and follow-up support. Most churches don’t have
the resources to individually support a mentoring
program by themselves. Therefore, it may be necessary for you to collaborate with existing mentoring
programs, or to have a strong network of others who
will also support your community mentoring effort.
NMC: What advice would you give a
community-based organization that is
looking to partner with a faith-based
organization?
DJ: While organizations might want to simply tack
churches on as an additional volunteer recruitment
or funding source, I don’t think it will be an easy
marriage if there are not some commonly held core
values and beliefs. You must each communicate your
missions and see where they intersect. It also helps
if you have some shared values.
You may need to do some convincing of the faithbased organization about the importance of strong
program procedures, including screening. As I tell
folks, if the pope were to apply to our program, we
would put him through all of the same thorough
screening we do for each of our Kinship mentors.
We need to be especially careful for people with
good intentions to make sure that they have the
training and personal attributes to successfully carry
out a long-term relationship with a child. If not, they
should be redirected. We can do more harm than
good if we set kids up for more broken promises. ◆
You can learn more about the Kinship programs, and
read the evaluation impact statement for the Minneapolis program, on the Web at
www.kinship.org.
Summer 2003
A Faith-Based Initiative Continues To Grow
The NMC checks in with Public/Private Ventures about its recent efforts
In 1998, Public/Private Ventures, the highly
esteemed research and policy organization based in
Philadelphia, began a demonstration project in 15
cities to assess the effectiveness of partnerships among
faith-based institutions and the juvenile justice system. Much of the project was inspired by the success
of the Boston Ten Point Coalition, a coalition of
small, predominantly African American churches
that has had tremendous success in reducing juvenile
crime and homicide rates. The project hopes to investigate the potential, limitations, and effective practices
of faith-based organizations’ efforts to work with
high-risk youth.
The NMC recently spoke with several P/PV staff
about the progress of the initiative and some of the
findings, successes, and struggles to this point.
NMC: What is the common approach and
goals of the initiative across the study’s
sites?
P/PV: All 12 remaining NFBI (National FaithBased Initiative) sites are collaborating with local
justice, faith, and social service partners to target,
recruit, and provide a set of services to high-risk
youth. Their goals are to affect the life chances of
these youth through mentoring, job training, and
placement, and educational and relational programming. The sites are also focused on developing their
organizational capacity and sustainability so that
they can continue over the long term.
The most successful and comprehensive sites have
developed local advisory groups, composed of justice, faith, and social service partners who advise
and shape the local initiatives; recruit high-risk
youth from justice partners; provide a few focused
high-quality direct programs; meet other needs of
youth by providing partner and referral services;
and case manage youth by tracking attendance and
providing follow-up support, prevention, and crisis
intervention services. The local initiatives are led by
governing boards and/or executive staff, whose task
is to enhance the quality of the internal organizational components, such as strategic planning, financial
sustainability, and data collection.
NMC: Could you give our readers two or
three illustrative successes from across
the programs?
P/PV, Brooklyn: The Brooklyn site, Youth and
Congregations in Partnership (YCP), has successfully developed all program components discussed
above. The Brooklyn district attorney’s office, which
developed YCP, an intervention program for youth
who have committed felony offenses, leads this site.
YCP developed an advisory group made up of
faith, juvenile justice, social service, parent, and
youth partners, which provide guidance to the initiative. Their high-quality program works with highrisk, court-adjudicated youth and provides them
with faith-based, congregational team mentoring
(three to five adult faith-based mentors from a congregation provide mentoring to one youth per mentor team) and heavy case management. Additionally, they provide partner services in the form of art
therapy/mural development, Job Corps and job
training/placement, and referral services for counseling, mediation, anger management, education
assessment, and drug and alcohol treatment.
Through great perseverance, YCP leadership has
been able to slowly build its local funding partners,
including the Pinkerton Foundation, so it can sustain its efforts over the long term.
P/PV, Denver: A Denver intermediary group,
the Denver Metro Black Church Initiative, first
led the Denver site. However, after two years in
the initiative, Grace and Truth Pentecostal Church
became the lead agency for the Denver site based
on its leadership and track record of serving highrisk girls in Denver. P/PV has provided intensive
technical assistance to this site and, over the past
year, it has become an incorporated, nonprofit
agency (Positive Connection, Inc.), with a governing
board, local funding partners, and an expanded
staff. It has extended its program reach and now
serves approximately 85 high-risk, court-adjudicated
girls each year. With recent additional funds, it is
also assisting a local school by serving 30 girls who
are at least two years below grade level in literacy.
NMC: What differences have emerged
among the sites as to why some are more
successful while others struggle?
We have found the ability to stay focused on program structure and implement the programs effectively and consistently is critical to success. Tied
to this are the organizational disciplines of strategic
See INITIATIVE, page 16
15
The National Mentoring Center Bulletin
INITIATIVE: planning; program management and monitoring;
continued and the development of accountability structures,
from page 15 including periodic internal evaluation, work plan-
◆
◆
ning, data collection, and reporting to the board(s)
and funder(s), while keeping the needs of the youth
central to the program.
◆
The National Mentoring
Center Bulletin
A newsletter of the National
Mentoring Center
Northwest Regional
Educational Laboratory
101 S.W. Main Street, Suite 500
Portland, OR 97204
Phone: (503) 275-0135 or
1-800-547-6339, ext. 135
Fax: (503) 275-0444
E-mail:
mentorcenter@nwrel.org
Home page:
www.nwrel.org/mentoring
NWREL Executive
Director/CEO:
Dr. Carol Thomas
National Mentoring Center
Director:
Mark Fulop
Editor:
Michael Garringer
Graphic Designer:
Michael Heavener
Technical Editor:
Eugenia Cooper Potter
Partner organizations:
Big Brothers Big Sisters
of America
230 North 13th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Phone: (215) 567-7000
Public/Private Ventures
2000 Market Street, Suite 600
Philadelphia PA 19103
Phone: (215) 557-4400
This project was supported by
Award No. 1999-JG-FX-K001
awarded by the Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs,
U.S. Department of Justice. Points
of view or opinions in this document are those of the author and
do not necessarily represent the
official position or policies of the
U.S. Department of Justice.
16
Some of the sites that struggled a bit more shifted
the focus from their mission and began expanding
programs without first planning for the expansion
and raising the requisite resources needed to expand.
This can happen for a variety of reasons, including
desiring to serve all community needs and/or seeking
funding. Whatever the reason, we find that this type
of non-strategic expansion compromises program
resources, quality, and development.
NMC: What have the sites’ experiences
taught you about having realistic
expectations of program effectiveness
when the children and youth being
served are at high risk?
P/PV: We have learned that the importance
of ongoing involvement with all youth is critical
when attempting to make a lasting impact on their
lives. In the late 1980s, the Carnegie Corporation’s
Council on Adolescent Development began to
publish research findings that emphasized adolescents’ needs for a continuity of supports throughout
their teen years, including guidance and support
from adults and positive activities, particularly
during non-school hours. P/PV’s own mentoring
research had provided information about the
characteristics that make for productive adult-youth
relationships, including those that take place in
programmatic settings.
One of the most crucial lessons we have learned
is the need to build in a system of accountability
that ensures this type of continual support/service
delivery to high-risk youth, that is, structured case
management. We have also learned that structured
case management needs to be coupled with consistent follow-up and data tracking—a management
information system (MIS). The following components are critical to ensuring that consistent, supportive programming is delivered to high-risk youth:
◆ A standard intake (youth and family) is
completed for each youth
◆ A needs assessment is completed for each youth
◆ A program plan is developed for each participant
(outlining direct and referral services)
Staff conduct weekly or biweekly follow-up with
referral service providers, youth, and family
An MIS system is developed that tracks participant demographic information (such as age and
sex), risk level (self-esteem, delinquent behavior),
attendance, referral data, and outcomes
Staff need an immediate follow-up plan for youth
who are absent from programming
NMC: Based on your experiences, what
are the most significant factors needed
to make interagency collaborations
work? Does the fact that your sites are
all faith-based change the dynamics?
Make it easier? Harder?
P/PV: Partnering among nonprofit organizations,
whether faith-based or secular, is challenging. Thus,
we were somewhat surprised to see how smoothly
the partnerships among faith-based organizations
operated once they were formed. Currently, 127
predominantly small, African American faith-based
organizations or congregations are actively involved
in the initiative across the 12 sites.
There were several reasons these partnerships were
effective. Congregations were united by a common
mission to minister not only to their own congregations but also to the neighborhood outside the
church building. Also, congregations did not want
to tackle the difficult work of a high-risk youth initiative alone. They found strength in numbers and
were able to pool the resources of each congregation,
sharing facilities, political networks, and volunteers
to support the initiative.
NMC: Looking into your crystal ball,
paint a picture or vision of what these
model programs will look like five years
from now.
P/PV: We have found that the sites experiencing
the most success are meeting a critical, recognized
need in their communities, and have formed strong
partnerships with faith-based, justice, and social
service community-based service providers. The
notion of pooling resources and identifying local
funding streams is going to be essential to the longterm sustainability of these groups.
See INITIATIVE, page 19
Summer 2003
A Church/BBBS Partnership Finds
Success Where It Counts: With Kids
ATLANTA, Georgia—Faith-based partnerships
have provided a successful avenue for expansion
for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta
(BBBS), one of the oldest and largest mentoring
organizations in the city. BBBS’s work with Cascade United Methodist Church offers an example
of how a secular organization can join forces
with a faith community to achieve shared goals.
The Cascade congregation was looking for a way
to get involved with and reach out to the community.
After linking up with BBBS, the church has formed
14 matches that meet on or off the church campus
for a minimum of eight hours a month. The matches
are already getting positive results. One Big Brother
and Little Brother matched through the church have
developed their own handshake. The “Little” just
attended an agency-affiliated five-week golf camp,
and the “Big” was there at his graduation to celebrate his achievement. The “Big” has also helped
his “Little” with schoolwork, and returned from
a recent business trip with a University of North
Carolina tennis team T-shirt for his tennis-loving
“Little,” his name emblazoned on the back.
For other organizations and initiatives seeking to
build effective partnerships with faith-based organizations, BBBS would like to suggest that you keep
the following in mind:
1. Remember that although faith-based groups
may look and act quite differently from communitybased initiatives, the basic principles for developing
a mentoring program are still the same. The administration of the program should be managed in the
same manner, employing written policies and procedures, criminal background checks, confidentiality
policies, and other proven approaches.
2. Be careful to tailor your PR materials, training
curricula, and forms to the faith-based partner with
whom you are working. Get input from the partner
about terminology, images, appropriate questions,
and so on.
3. Pay careful attention to confidentiality. Faithbased communities are close-knit and often familyoriented, and special care needs to be taken to
ensure complete confidentiality for all parties
involved.
4. Maintain consistency in staffing as much as
possible. Faith-based groups are often sensitive
to perceived instability, and a constantly changing
staff liaison may not be helpful.
5. Make certain that your program provides
adequate training for the mentors, the mentees,
and the parents. Research indicates that clear and
consistent training for everyone involved will help
prolong the match and keep it healthy and fun.
“ONE BIG
BROTHER AND
LITTLE BROTHER
MATCHED
THROUGH THE
CHURCH HAVE
DEVELOPED
THEIR OWN
HANDSHAKE.”
In addition to its faith-based initiatives, BBBS
of Metro Atlanta has been successful in partnering
with corporations, other nonprofit organizations,
and community groups. The agency, a 42-year-old
affiliate of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America,
has also developed a number of programs for
children with specific needs, for example, Hispanic
children, children dealing with HIV and AIDS,
and hearing-impaired students, among others.
For more information on trainings and the annual
mentoring conference, visit the Web site at
http://www.thementoringinstitute.net/ or contact
Lynne King, associate vice president of training
and education at 404-601-7046. ◆
17
The National Mentoring Center Bulletin
Resources Offer Strategies for Faith Efforts
A wide variety of how-to guides and faith-based resources is available in the NMC Library
T
he past decade has seen a dramatic rise
in the popularity of mentoring as a strategy
for supporting and guiding youth. A growing
number of faith communities have joined in the
movement. Many churches and other houses of
worship are beginning to implement mentoring
services, either as stand-alone programs or as supplements to their existing youth education and outreach efforts. The following resources, available for
loan from the NMC Lending Library, can assist
churches and other faith institutions in developing
mentoring programs through their congregations.
They may also be useful to community-based programs that are partnering with faith institutions or
adding faith-based components to existing services.
Church-Based Mentoring: A Program
Manual for Mentoring Ministries (United
Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania’s Volunteer
Centers/Philadelphia One to One, 1994)
This guidebook covers the basics of developing
and managing a “mentoring ministry” for youth.
Although the structure promoted in the guidebook
is that of congregation members mentoring congregation youth, the mentoring relationships it promotes
are not inherently religious in nature. Instead, the
guide serves as a very efficient blueprint for creating a
program focused on typical “big brother/sister” types
of friendship-based relationships. It does cover the
involvement of the pastor and other church leaders,
especially in the program planning and development
section. A very useful collection of sample forms, job
descriptions, and program policies makes this guide
an excellent starting point for any church or congregation looking to develop a program from scratch.
Church Mentoring Network: A Program
Manual for Linking and Supporting
Mentoring Ministries (National Mentoring
Partnership, 1999)
This manual serves as a companion piece to
Church-Based Mentoring, and focuses on how
to set up a larger network of mentoring ministries.
The strategies put forth stem from a project in
Philadelphia linking African American churches
that were engaged in mentoring. The network
encouraged the sharing of resources, training ideas,
and program tools across churches, essentially keeping participating churches from “reinventing the
wheel” in the development of their programs.
The manual outlines the benefits and services of
an established network and explores the roles and
18
responsibilities of the planning team, network
coordinator, advisory groups, and participating
congregations. It is an excellent resource for faithbased programs that want to expand their outreach
and partnerships at a municipal or regional level.
Successful Youth Mentoring:
A Step-by-Step Guide. 24 Practical Sessions
To Impact Kids’ Lives, and Successful Youth
Mentoring 2 (Group Publishing/Emerging Young
Leaders, 1998 & 1999)
These guides for mentors offer a number of
activities, lessons, and teaching opportunities
for use in faith-focused mentoring relationships.
The mentoring activities cover familiar topics such
as goal-setting, accountability, self-esteem, and
personal development while drawing heavily from
biblical scriptures and traditional Christian values.
Both guides are very thorough and well-organized,
providing a blueprint for the building of the
mentoring relationship over time. They might
not be applicable for many faith-based programs
because of the intensive religious focus, but they
are perfect for use in programs whose relationships
are structured around Christian teachings.
Intensive Caring: Practical Ways
to Mentor Youth (Group Publishing, 1998)
This resource is designed to assist a congregation
in establishing a mentoring program. It covers
many of the basics of mentoring and how it can be
integrated into a church’s existing youth services
and programs. It then moves into more practical
discussions of how to get the program up and
running, different program models a church might
choose to implement, and different populations
of youth it may wish to serve. Specific chapters
are devoted to mentoring young men as they make
the transition to adulthood, using mentoring in
confirmation, mentoring teen mothers, and using
mentoring for leadership development.
A Companion Way: Mentoring Youth
in Searching Faith (Saint Mary’s Press, 1998)
This guide focuses on setting up mentoring programs for youth who are exploring issues of Christian faith. It details the process for setting up the
program, complete with information geared toward
both youth and adults as they enter into their relationship. The exploration of faith is facilitated by a
series of group and one-on-one “sessions” in which
mentors and mentees participate.
Summer 2003
One on One: Making the Most of Your
Mentoring Relationship (Faith and Life
Press/Mennonite Publishing House, 1993)
This is another well-conceived guide for mentors
and program coordinators in “mentoring ministry”
programs. It offers a solid overview of the role of
a mentor, and tips for establishing the relationship
and understanding youth. It also offers a number
of useful forms to aid coordinators in implementing
the program and helpful discussion tools to aid
mentors in teaching life lessons and values through
scriptures. It would be valuable and appropriate for
use in programs that have an emphasis on biblical
teachings.
We are noting patterns that point to the belief that
in coming years the average age of the youth being
served will continue to drop as younger children
are increasingly becoming involved in the juvenile
justice system. We are also seeing that a larger number of young women will be served through these
programs—again, as we are witnessing a rise in the
involvement of young women in the juvenile justice
system. Since most of the sites were developed to
meet the needs of high-risk boys and young men,
they will need to analyze their programs to ensure
they are effectively structured to meet the needs of
high-risk girls and young women.
ble. We further recommend that the sites translate
these goals, benchmarks, and outcomes into an
operational work plan they can use to guide and
monitor their progress. The work plans should
be reviewed and updated weekly by leadership and
staff to ensure that the program is on target toward
meeting its goals.
NMC: If you were talking to a group of
community activists from faith-based and
other community-based, grassroots
organizations, what would be the central
messages you would give them if they
were looking to go down the same road
as your initiative?
Small to mid-sized faith-based organizations and
community-based organizations should consider
the following essential elements:
Focus on Mission: The organization should have
a clearly defined vision and mission for what it is
seeking to accomplish. Programs are successful when
they are focused, passionate, and diligent and work
daily on fulfilling their mission.
Strategic Planning: A key to focusing on
mission is engaging in the strategic planning process.
We recommend the establishment of a plan that
clearly outlines the nature of the partnership/
collaboration and the programmatic components.
For each program component, there should be goals
and objectives with short- and long-term benchmarks, measurable outcomes, and persons responsi-
Books may be borrowed from the National Mentoring Center library via interlibrary loan at your
local public library. The collection can be searched
on the NMC Web site at http://www.nwrel.org/
mentoring/library.html. Please contact Resource
Associate Michael Garringer (garringm@nwrel.
org; 503-275-9647) if you have questions about
these or any other mentoring resources. ◆
RESOURCES:
continued
from page 18
INITIATIVE:
continued
from page 16
Collaboration Is Key: Although the individual
organization may not be able to meet all the needs
of high-risk youth, they might be able to create a
network of supports that can address the issues
facing these youth and their families through the
effective use of referral agencies and collaborative
partners. Over the course of this demonstration,
we found that in several cases there were organizations in close proximity conducting similar work that
was greatly enhanced by collaboration. By seeking
out partners that have experience and a proven track
record in a particular service area, the strength of
the overall collaboration is improved.
Build Sustainability Systems Early: It is never
too early to begin planning for long-term sustainability, particularly financial sustainability. Identifying key stakeholders in the community that can be
champions of the organization early in the process
is critical. A long-term sustainability plan should
be developed early in the process to seek out local
funding streams and potential revenue-generating
service contracts. Organizations should be sure to
build a diversified financial plan, including individuals, corporations, foundations, congregations, wills,
estates, and trusts.
You can learn more about P/PV’s faith-based
initiative in their most recent report, Moving
Beyond the Walls: Faith and Justice Partnerships
Working for High-Risk Youth, which can be
downloaded from the Web at: http://www.ppv.org/
content/faith1.html. ◆
19
The National Mentoring Center Bulletin
New NMC Guidebook Offers Overview
of Program Development
The National Mentoring Center has just released Foundations of Program Success: A Guidebook
for Mentoring Programs. This guide—the Center’s most comprehensive publication to date—
systematically defines the components essential for successful mentoring programs of all shapes and sizes.
The guide draws upon the national evaluation of Juvenile Mentoring Programs, the body of mentoring
research and program development literature, and the Center’s experience as a technical assistance
provider to identify 31 separate program elements across five broad categories of program design:
◆
◆
◆
◆
◆
Strong agency capacity for service delivery
Effective program practices
Strong formal partnerships and informal collaborations
Sustainable resource development and funding
Useful program evaluation
Most mentoring research indicates that programs which lack this foundation for service development and delivery are at a greater
risk for program failure and are less likely to meet program goals.
In addition to discussing each program component, the guidebook provides self-assessment questions to help users think through
each aspect of program design and implementation. Also included are recommended resources that can assist in the development
of the program. The guide is designed to cover all the key elements of running a program, while also being flexible enough for use
across a wide variety of program models, including community-based, school-based, faith-based models.
Copies may be downloaded from the NMC Web site, www.nwrel.org/mentoring/foundations.html
Print copies can be ordered by calling the Center at (503) 275-0135.
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PAID
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Permit No. 250
Northwest Regional
Educational Laboratory
101 S.W. Main Street, Suite 500
Portland, OR 97204
Phone: (503) 275-0135 or 1-800-547-6339, ext. 135
Fax: (503) 275-0444
E-mail: mentorcenter@nwrel.org
Home page: www.nwrel.org/mentoring